I think formal education is very important for most people to expand our minds. Other people don’t do well in a structured setting, and some people excell so much in one area, the average schhol system cannot accomodate their need for acquiring knowledge in that subject matter. Of course also there are some people who have very low IQ’s, or some sort of disability that also don’t fit well into mainstream education.

I believe in to some extent suiting the education to the child. Some children do best in public school, some in private, some homeschooled, all are ok with me.

I think secondary education should help prepare students to either have a skill they can work at after graduation, prepare them for a vocational school, or prepare and help them to go to college. Again, it depends on the individual and what they are capable of doing ajd what they want to do.

In America I still think the high school level needs to be better at helping atudents evaluate and move in the direction of what to do after high school.

I think seeking knowledge can bea very satisfying thing. Whether through school or on our own. But, at the primary and secondary level, I do think most children need to be put into an educational setting, and I believe in exposing kids to many different things, not tracking them at young ages.

The education system has many goals and those goals aren’t usually paired well with student interests. The education system prepares some students for higher education; some for factory jobs; some for technical jobs and so on. Often times, the goal of the education is based on the community the children come from, and not on their talents.

The education system must certify students are prepared. To do this, they tend to rely on tests because a test is a very efficient way of coming up with a score, and these scores are widely accepted as being meaningful. They aren’t actually highly correlated with life success or career, but they still are a simple way of giving the customers of education what they want in an easily understandable format. So they are widely used.

To turn the education system into an effective mechanism for preparing and certifying all students from all backgrounds and talents and skill sets would be very expensive. It would require thinking about education in ways that are uncommon now, though well-known.

Baby steps. We made a big mistake with “no child left untested” and we still have to undo that. We still leave children who grow up in poverty uneducated and that has to be changed. We waste far too much money on sports. There is a lot of research done on education and we know far more than we act on. Things will change over the decades and we will improve. Meanwhile, those of us who can afford it can pay for the right education for our own kids.

The education system is not for me. Anything I need to learn about rocks I can learn from reading books and saving my money for better things, like traveling the world and seeing the rocks that I am learning about. I don’t need to sit in an auditorium with 800 other numbskulls for 4 years to get that info.